Mariangellys Rodriguez

E-mail: rodri242@umn.edu

Year entered: 2007

Degree received:
B.S., Chemistry, University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, 2007

Honors and Awards:

• Graduate School DOVE Fellowship, 2007-2008

Thesis research:

I will be working in two independent projects for my thesis. First, we sought to understand the mechanism by which cytochrome P450s (CYPs), ceramides, and EETs interact in breast cancer. We hypothesize that CYPs have a ceramidase activity, which in addition to their known epoxigenase activity, protects cancer cells from death. We would also like to better understand the role of ceramide in mitochondrial induced cell death and we propose that one of the mechanisms by which ceramide achieves this is through activation of calpain in mitochrondria. Finally, we want to determine whether EETs inhibit ceramide directly or indirectly and by which specific mechanism. Techniques such as MTT assay and Mass Spectrometry as well as other molecular biology assays will be used to address these questions.

The second project deals with the mechanistic role of EETs in sequential transformation carcinogenesis. We will use the Weinberg’s sequential transformation model to determine the effect of EET on transformation by specific oncogenes assayed by soft agar cloning, MTT assay, apoptosis assay, and study of EIF4alpha, mTOR, hRas, myc, and Her2. The role of CYP epoxigenases will be tested through MSPPOH, ESI Mass Spectrometry, and Western blot.